mHealth: Where Is the Potential for Aiding Informal Caregivers?

Abstract

The health and well-being of informal caregivers often take a backseat to those that they care for. While systems, technologies, and services that provide care and support for those with chronic illnesses are established and continuously improved, those that support informal caregivers are less explored. An international survey about motivations to use mHealth technologies was posted to online platforms related to chronic illnesses. We focused on responses regarding the facilitators and challenges of achieving health goals, including the use of mHealth technologies, for the subgroup who identified as “Caregivers”. Findings indicate that mHealth technology is not yet the most important motivational factor for achieving health goals in this group, but greater future potential is suggested.

Exploring User Visions for Modeling mHealth Apps Toward Supporting Patient-Parent-Clinician Collaboration and Shared Decision-making When Treating Adolescent Knee Pain in General Practice: Workshop Study

“…Qualitative studies by Slater et al [ 35 , 68 , 69 ] and Stinson et al [ 34 , 70 ] corroborated several of our findings about how mHealth-delivered health interventions (reminders, quantified self-tracking, and data feedback) held the potential for supporting adolescents with chronic pain through awareness, acceptance, and health decision-making between consultations, which could alleviate communicative obstacles during consultations. These studies focused on using mHealth data for enhanced communication during consultations as a driver for behavior change but provided little insights into how core features should accommodate the nonlinear, context-sensitive nature of mHealth interventions [ 38 ] or how to include parents as informal carers between GP consultations [ 71 ]. Systematic reviews by Moon et al [ 72 ] and Slater et al [ 68 ] corroborated participants’ visions about how mHealth could improve communication between GP clinics and home environments to facilitate collaborative care.…”

“…Furthermore, the act of tracking pain, reviewing aggregated data, and making management decisions could help adolescents to construct and articulate theories about how the knee pain progressed in time [ 88 ], which could then be discussed and qualified by the GP [ 36 ] to inform negotiation and shared decision-making [ 60 ]. Our analysis identified parents’ potential for taking on the role as informal carers and supporting the integration of treatments and management advice [ 71 ]; however, gaining the insight needed to know when to step in, set boundaries, and mediate between the adolescent and GPs required time, trust, and acceptance of the division of labor within the collaborative space.…”

Expectations of users and non-users of wearable sensors and mobile health applications

“…The online survey was open for data collection between November 2018 and March 2020. Primary results comparing those with and without chronic diseases [6,7] and investigating the role of caretakers [8] have been previously published. A request for ethical approval was reviewed at the Regional Ethics Committee (REK) and found to be exempt from their purview (ref.…”

Dataset of motivational factors for using mobile health applications and systems

“… These data are also a timestamp to allow comparing them to newer, not yet collected data and the change in motivation to share health data. These data are useful because they allow other researchers to verify the findings in the original publications [4] , [5] , [6] , and the data can be further analyzed for new research questions using the same variables. …”